VilaWeb (formerly known as La Infopista) was incorporated
in May 1995, designed originally as a local directory which aimed to bring
together, in Catalan language, all of the websites which were being managed
in our country or which made reference to it. It was formed by a group of
journalists who had already been working with the traditional media for
many years, and who were consequently seeking the way to integrate the
tradition of journalism into that fledgling invention.

One year later its birth (May 1995), La Infopista, directory of
Internet in Catalan language, turned into VilaWeb and extended its offer of
services till to become a complete online system.

In June 1996 we decided to start up local editions of the
newspaper, editions which now operate in more than 90 towns and cities
covering all of the country and also the cities of Los Angeles, Mexico,
Melbourne, and New York (cities which have an active Catalan community and
which are also interesting in their own right). We want to emphasise in
this respect that our project is absolutely open to globality and has no
intention whatsoever to close itself in its own country. It simply
prioritises the presentation of information in function of the parameters
which we consider most appropriate to our public.

Today VilaWeb is already the third electronic newspaper based in
Barcelona and the only Internet-born media to be among the top ten
newspapers in the whole Spanish State. The statistics of the Office of Justification of Diffusion (OJD),
which in Spain is the body which monitors the sales figures of the
newspapers for publicity purposes, give us a leading circulation in
Catalonia, with close to 400.000 users a month.

Since 1997, we have been working on the complete remodelling of
VilaWeb and, at the same time, to create several major areas: news, the web directory Nosaltres.Com (which was our
origin) and, also, we started up several thematic channels (sports, computing, economy, music, telecommunications, and Cap de 7mana), which aim to create
this same feeling of proximity which we have generated with the local
editions, but now centred on hobbies or interests (since we understand that
proximity is determined not only by geography, and much less so in
Internet, which, by definition, is aterritorial). Also, we have implemented
a large list of forums a
nd a big chat room. VilaWeb has a
cooperation agreement with other mass media, institutions and associations
in order to organize debates. This sessions have welcomed mayors,
ministers, footballers, writers, singers, judges, actors and in general all
kinds of public figures. These people voluntarily participate in a virtual
press conference where the 'journalists' are the users of VilaWeb
themselves. They have the right to ask questions, accepting a series of
rules of debate laid down by our editorial board. The results tend to be
striking. We conduct this press conference in collaboration with a
traditional newspaper, La Vanguardia, and a radio station, COM Ràdio. On 1999, we have
created the first Romance language WAP service, called VilaWeb Mòbils, and we launched a
huge project called Colles (Internet clubs) on the first quarter of
2000.

Of course, everyday from the VilaWeb front page a service of news
is offered, generally with URLs that list informative sources and allow to
the users to enlarge their knowledge of the facts. These news can arrive
from all over the world, but naturally those of their own country are the
most important. We also provide the users with the main articles selected
from newspapers from
over the world and with special dossiers
from Nosaltres.Com on important issues, both local and global. And we
continue working...
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more on VilaWeb concept here

This are the current sections of Nosaltres.Com, VilaWeb's directory:

Born with 120 pages connected (May 1995), today Nosaltres.Com has
more than 20.000 URLs organised in the following directory: